YouTube Railway program list

[Inversnecky]

Someone's recently started posting full episodes of the BBC's Making Tracks, presented by Bob Symes and Mary-Jean Hasler:

There were 18 episodes across three series from 1993-1995, focusing on steam in Britain and abroad. It was evidently popular enough to make it onto BBC One, but then disappeared all of a sudden. There are other bits of footage on YouTube as well. I've got most episodes on tape so if I ever get the equipment to upload them, I will do so

Also would highly recommend all six episodes of The Train Now Departing, the BBC series broadcast in 1988 to mark 20 years after the end of steam. It has the sort of gravitas you rarely get from modern BBC documentaries:

The Long Drag:

The West Highlander:

The Holiday Line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtKAmiE1mkM
Steam on the Isle of Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AWSG4I0m5g
Lines of Industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D40hk9WNAh0
The Survivors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15Tb9Dsh3XE

Some others from ITV in the 80s:

Mallard - The Drake's Progress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED3m2r8u8kU
Steam on the Settle and Carlisle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a12H63J6gC0
Didcot 20 - A Celebration (GWS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ5e9SfJ9Vk

And there's also the Seconds from Disaster episodes on Ladbroke Grove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz34YpGCUj4, and the Kings Cross fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIAenEFpomU

A new link for Seconds From Disaster Ladbroke Grove:

Seconds From Disaster - Paddington Rail Disaster

Paddington Rail Disaster October 5, 1999, a passenger train that departed from Paddington Station in London, the morning rush hour crashes into a train comin...

youtu.be

 

[JammyJames08]

There was a tonight with Trevor McDonald featuring Connex South Eastern from 2002. Michael Nicholson presented it. Is that anywhere?

 

[SWTCommuter]

This restored and colourised footage of London during WW2 includes some evocative shots of Waterloo station starting at 12 mins 30 secs

 

[Swanley 59]

The Border Counties Railway is fondly remembered in the BBC film, Slow Train to Riccarton (1986)

 

[SWTCommuter]

4-PEP stock running out of Waterloo

 

[SWTCommuter]

WW2 vintage German locomotives still operating in Bosnia

 

[Swanley 59]

The Wansbeck Piper, the last train on the Wansbeck Line in 1966, from a report on BBC Look North in 1988. I once read a description of this deeply rural route as "the railway they forgot to close" to account for its survival from the withdrawal of passenger services in 1952 until its final demise.

 

[Paul180]

I have found the full Horizon rail crash 1972 documentary I've been looking for a while. archive.org/details/BBCHorizonCollection512Episodes/BBC+Horizon+-+s1972e16+-+Rail+Crash.mp4

 

[SWTCommuter]

1976: Meet the Commuters | Nationwide | BBC Archive
Bernard Falk investigates a modern social phenomenon, commuting. What inspires hundreds of thousands of people to spend up to four hours a day commuting to work in London? How do they pass all that time spent cooped up inside crowded train carriages and buses? Bernard meets all manner of people on his travels, from the Waterloo Station announcer Margaret Knight - who only ever sees the commuters from afar - to Spud Murphy, the helpful stationmaster at East Farleigh - who knows the names of every commuter at his station and tries to bring his own personal touch to their journeys. Solicitor Michael Gilbert uses his commute to write 'whodunit' novels, while another commuter writes poetry, and then there's the bridge players - for whom the daily commute is often too short.

Originally broadcast 4 October, 1976.

 

[Undaunted]

Apologies if I've missed it, but for anyone interested in railways south of the river, Geoff Burch's 'Ramblings of a Railwayman' and 'Further Ramblings of Railwaymen' is excellent. Geoff started life as a fireman at Guildford and then moved on to be a secondman at Woking, driver at Effingham Junction and then driver at Woking before becoming a trainer at Waterloo South Sidings training school. It's difficult to do justice to the sheer scope of his material, but the photographs are very evocative and the further ramblings series bring in memories of many other drivers of the era.. There is plenty of steam material, but Geoff's secondman and driving days were in the diesel/electric era and are well covered too.

The series is largely based on his books, which I have to admit to having completely passed me by, but they are now out of stock and don't seem to be easily acquired (when I last looked, anyway).

 

[Aarchive]

Memories of the Plymouth to Yealmpton Railway. Based on a book by local railway enthusiast, Anthony Kingdom.

The video is in the original format, but I am planning on updating it soon, including new images and new 'modern' footage.

 

[Chrius56000]

And there's this one, "Points and Aspects" by B.R. dealing.with the 1970s resignalling of the WCML from Weaver Junction to Glasgow!

Chris Williams

 

[Ken H]

Movie of a ramble from Bewdley to Blaneau Ffestiniog in steam days.

Text from the you tube page
A LOOK AT THE LINE IN AND ARCHIVE WALES. WITH MANY SHOTS OF WELSH STANDARD GUAGE RAILWAYS BEFORE PRESERVATION.

 

[SWTCommuter]

BBC Panorama report about BR including interview with Dr Beeching

 

[55002]

For fans of 1980s ECML, especially in the Grantham area, avocet1989 channel is worth a look

 

[LUYMun]

Just finished watching this fantastic documentary, albeit a very long one, showcasing the Kosovo humanitarian aid ‘Train for Life’ in September 1999, driven by DRS locos 20901, 20902 and 20903:

 

[WesternLancer]

Nairn Across Britain (BBC Manchester 1972)- part 3
on i-player

BBC - Nairn Across Britain - Available now

Available episodes of Nairn Across Britain

www.bbc.co.uk

I just found this and watched it. Part 3 'Leeds to Scotland' starts with what is virtually a cab ride in a 1st generation DMU front seat from Leeds to Skipton, then he progresses over the S&C and then on the remains of the Waverley route to Edinburgh, extensive shots of the disused station at Hawick, at the time still in use by BR parcels service road vehicles.

Ian Nairn was a noted architectural commentator and critic, and author. There is plenty of rail interest in episode 3 and other transport interest in the other episodes (episode 2 is a canal journey on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal). the series is a wider period piece of interest too.

I see this series gets a mention in some other dedicated threads from a while back but occurred to me it might be helpful to have this episode mentioned in this useful thread.

 

[Chrius56000]

. . .Orange B.R. N.E.Region Signage at Skipton if you watch carefully and there's L.M. Totems at Settle and Appleby West – there was a station at Appleby East but I'm not sure whether it survived to the Totem Era!

 

[WesternLancer]

. . .Orange B.R. N.E.Region Signage at Skipton if you watch carefully and there's L.M. Totems at Settle and Appleby West – there was a station at Appleby East but I'm not sure whether it survived to the Totem Era!

Good spots! Would be interesting if a Totem expert could comment on Appleby East. I know some comment on the history threads occasionally

 

[Ken H]

. . .Orange B.R. N.E.Region Signage at Skipton if you watch carefully and there's L.M. Totems at Settle and Appleby West – there was a station at Appleby East but I'm not sure whether it survived to the Totem Era!

Wasnt Skipton always LM. or did it change. I remember the regional border near Connonley.

 

[Sun Chariot]

BBCs Railway Roundabout series, filmed in 1958 to 1962, are well documented and available via YouTube and on DVD.

Lesser known, are Pathe's A Look At Life occasional (annual, IIRC) newsreels, with coverage of all things transport related, during the 1960s. Gems such as the M6 when it first opened: minimal traffic and no safely barriers.
This one, from 1964, opens with a scene of ex-LMS Period 1 and Period 3 carriages on "death row". Health & Salety scrap methods: not here! At 5 minutes, an interesting clip - London Transport ran a Routemasrer bus in unpainted aluminium.

 

[Ken H]

Some digitised home movies here

Mr-Hed

Share your videos with friends, family and the world

youtube.com

Overnight journey from UK to Switzerland 1968 has some good shots of Folkestone Harbour and some continental railways..

There is one of Achenseebahn railway in Jenbach, Austria

 

[Mag_seven]

Overnight journey from UK to Switzerland 1868 has some good shots of Folkestone Harbour and some continental railways..

I bet it has.

 

[Ken H]

Not You tube and its LU so hope OK here. Link goes to movie taken in 1960's in tube trains and in stations. Its on X but visible to tose wuth no X account.

https://x.com/i/status/1946993513956049406

 

[whoosh]

Not You tube and its LU so hope OK here. Link goes to movie taken in 1960's in tube trains and in stations. Its on X but visible to tose wuth no X account.

https://x.com/i/status/1946993513956049406

The amount of (real and not so real AI bot) people on the 'right' and 'anti-left' of the political spectrum, who are littering social media with nostalgic clips down memory lane (you know, when Britain was great?) to be shared, to then keep appearing in newsfeeds with their other 'content' is insane.

 

[Ken H]

The amount of (real and not so real AI bot) people on the 'right' and 'anti-left' of the political spectrum, who are littering social media with nostalgic clips down memory lane (you know, when Britain was great?) to be shared, to then keep appearing in newsfeeds with their other 'content' is insane.

yes. some of the cr@p on bookface is just embarrasingly bad

 

[citycat]

A musical suspense film featuring music from Ray Davies of The Kinks.

Return to Waterloo.

Features a lot of BR Southern working between Guildford and Waterloo and is set on a train. Stars the recently departed Kenneth Colley as the Traveller.

If you miss the sound of a Solari destination board, it appears in the first minute of the film.

 

[ScotsRail]

Since the Beeching Plan, rural branch railway lines have been ripped up with as much vigour as they were originally put down in the great 'railway mania' of the 1840s. Very few are left now, and this film records the final two days of the line between King's Lynn and Dereham, twenty-six miles that served the scattered inhabitants of a lovely part of Norfolk for more than 120 years.

A lovely little documentary about the end of days for a line in Norfolk including the lady and kids opening and shutting the crossing and someone hoping they'll be allowed to stay in their station house when in 2025 you can look it up and see it was flattened to be replaced by a road

Clip taken from Gone Tomorrow: The End of the Line, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 2 June, 1969

 

[LUYMun]

An old BBC "First Sight" documentary dating on 30 January 1997 showing the appalling state of London Underground infrastructure owing to funding gaps. Plenty of pre-refurbished 1973 Stock footage within.

Another from First Sight talking about British Rail's image problem, airing in 1991:

 

[55002]